


Overtime

by HenryMercury



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Adults, And also some sadness, F/F, F/M, Family, Future Fic, Gen, Humor, Momboss and Detectiveson, Police Chief Mako, Supposedly retired Lin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 05:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4654284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako is Chief of Police. </p>
<p>Lin is reluctantly retired.</p>
<p>Korra and Asami's kids wreak havoc in Republic City. </p>
<p>Time passes and the cycles of life continue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overtime

"Hey Junior, how's Chief doing?" Sinrick, one of the more brazen young detectives, asks as Mako steps into the office for the day.

Sinrick is second generation Water Tribe in Republic City, and reminds Mako more than a little of Korra when he'd first met her decades ago. The kid's a formidable waterbender and a genuinely good cop, aside from the habitual insubordination.

"Chief's doing fine," Mako tells Sinrick firmly. "Chief says get back to your work. Chief says you should have all reports on the Mori homicide on his desk by midday."

Sinrick's smirk disappears. "But that's—"

"Three hours," Mako finishes for him. "I suggest you hop to it."

He moves on down the long office space, past Sinrick's desk and the others, until finally he's in his own office and can shut the heavy metal doors behind him. He can't bend them the way Beifong used to, but she'd thinned them to a reasonable weight as a gift to him, her successor, upon her retirement.

Retirement indeed. Mako pinches the bridge of his nose and grants his dry eyes a nice long blink. He'd made several house calls before coming in to the station this morning, and had arrived at one of the residences only to find the witness chatting animatedly with an elderly woman in a long, grey coat.

"Lin," he'd interrupted. She looked irritated that he'd caught her, but not at all cowed.

"Ming was just saying that she didn't see a man in a purple suit anywhere near her yard on the night of the robbery," she'd told Mako gruffly.

"That's good to know," he replied, forcing a smile to reassure Ming. "But you're not working this case, Lin."

Lin snorted. "Of course I'm working this case! It's what I was just doing, before you showed up to step on my toes. Work. On this case. Besides, I'm the one who found this lead amongst the mountains of rubbish you left lying on the kitchen table—"

"Alright," Mako conceded, because otherwise he'd never get her off Ming's doorstep and back home. "But we agreed: no legwork, nothing official. You've been retired for eleven years, Chief."

Lin looked at him, long and quizzical. Mako was no stranger to these silent interrogations. He hardened himself against Lin's stare and looked down into her faintly milky eyes until she stepped back, shrugged and told him fine, if he didn't want her help then he could spend the day running around chasing confirmation of a rumour all by himself.

As she'd spoken, he'd been distracted by a wisp of wiry hair flying out of her usual styling just by her ear. Lin had been asleep when he'd left the apartment that morning—at least, she'd made it look that way. She must have dressed in a hurry to beat him to his own rounds.

Her hair is completely white now, her face plays host to more frown lines than Mako has ever seen in one place, and she seems so much smaller than him these days.

Mako is Republic City's Chief of Police now—but he also knows that Lin, like Toph before her, will always be Chief no matter who sits behind that particular desk.   

She turned ninety last year—and while Toph lived notably longer than a century, and Avatar Kyoshi lived more than two, Lin has taken an awful lot of beatings and not a lot of vacations in her time, even compared to those two. Her right hand shakes—slightly, but consistently—when it holds anything heavier than a filled teacup. Her right shoulder in particular is a mass of gnarled metallic scarring that sags with wrinkles. Her ankles (both of which Mako knows she has broken on multiple occasions swinging from buildings and cars and landing heavily) ache so badly in the cold that any lesser being probably wouldn't venture out of bed. Her left knee hasn't been the same since she bent the metal pins out of it to use as weapons when escaping from an unexpectedly competent Agni Kai splinter group.

She actually likes to tell the story of that last incident, which for Lin is certainly an anomaly. She probably gets a kick out of making her audiences squeamish.

Mako is just settling into the statements he has to read over when his phone rings. He picks up.

"Hey brother!" Bolin's voice travels brightly down the line. "How's it going?"

"Fine. Busy."

"Boy, you sound morose. So everything's normal, then, huh? How's Chief doing?"

"Lin is fine. And I, Chief Mako, am fine too."

"Okay, I get it, everything's _fine fine fine_. Guess what? I got sent a new script, and it's about a fictional Avatar called Tik. You'll never guess who's playing him!"

"You?"

"Me! Isn't that awesome? I'm telling you, all my time spent being friends with the Avatar is about to pay off _big time_. Anyway, that's not actually why I called." His tone sobers, and Mako knows what the next subject will be.

"Mom took another turn for the worse." Bolin's abruptness is all the more marked after his overflow of mover-star updates.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Mako replies, sounding stilted to his own ears. Bolin knows him well enough to forgive the awkwardness.

"It's... well, it's expected. You know? We've all been expecting it. But Opal's still having a really hard time. She and Kuvira have been taking it out on each other again. And Huan's been painting some _dark_ stuff—I saw this one picture, and I don't really know what it was of, but it scared me, man. It's like there's this giant cloud hanging over the whole of Zaofu. But then if you actually look outside the weather's warm and everything's bright and the flowers are in bloom. It feels wrong."

Mako doesn't ask if Bolin himself is okay. The fact that Bolin has called him is answer enough.

Suyin has been unwell for some time, and despite the extensive efforts of her huge family, her entire city and her sprawling contact networks throughout the four nations, there's only so much that can be done. All the healers and medicines and special oasis waters in the world can't hold a spirit that's meant to depart in its place. Su herself has taken this fact in stride a lot more calmly and readily than any of her relatives.

"Should I come and stay with you for a while?" Mako asks. It'll be madness, dropping everything and going to Zaofu, but he's known for months it was going to have to happen sooner or later.

At least Lin won't be able to stage a mutiny at the station in his absence, since she'll have to visit the metal clan too. She's been avoiding the subject of her sister as things have become more and more grim, burying herself in work instead. Mako is in no position to blame her.

He wonders whether she's found anything new to link the four missing persons cases currently active in the south of the city together. He'd left the files in a locked drawer in his home study knowing full well that Lin regards metal locks as invitations to enter. He never calls her on prying, and she occasionally lends him a breakthrough; thus their system continues on its happily tacit way.

Honestly, the night Mako gets home and finds his papers untouched will be the day he starts to worry.

"I think we can hold out on that visit a little bit longer," Bolin answers, a tremor in his voice. "But I appreciate the offer. I know how busy you are with work."

After a decade in the job, Mako really understands how Lin stayed single; the demands of the job don't rest, and cutting time out for a date is a challenge only worth undertaking for someone who could _really_ be a match. The kicker is that there's rarely time to get to know and identify such a person. (Office romances, Mako discovered in his twenties, are not things it benefits him to pursue.) He has no idea how Korra and Asami have done it, raising their whole hoard of kids—teenagers and twenty-somethings now; spirits, the time goes. The Avatar and the CEO of Future Industries are two of the maybe three or four people in all of Republic City whose jobs make time demands as crazy as Mako's does.

The three of them—and Bolin, when he's not at his home in Zaofu, or halfway across the globe filming or doing press for his movers, or travelling with Opal and their twin girls, or doing Goodwill Ambassador work, or just plain volunteer aid work—grab drinks once in a while. More often it's business that brings them together. Sometimes that's a great thing, and their friendships make everything run more smoothly. Sometimes, Mako thinks, it just brings out the teenage tempers still lurking inside their middle-aged selves. They make each other's lives as easy and as hard as families always do.

Mako flicks through the papers before him, not actually reading them, but feeling mildly comforted by the illusion of progress as the page numbers climb.

"I am busy," he agrees with Bolin, "but that doesn't matter; not compared to family. You know that."

"Speaking of which—I know you said Aunt Lin is fine, but give me a little more info here? Opal's gonna want a report and she can tell when I'm just making up detail to satisfy her."

"She's still sneaking out to interview witnesses," Mako confesses. "But don't tell Opal that. She'll think I'm not keeping an eye on her aunt like I promised, and then she'll kidnap Lin and take her back to Zaofu to live with you guys, and then Lin will probably hire several top notch assassins to kill me in revenge."

Bolin's affectionate chuckle crackles out of the receiver. "We know you take good care of her, Mako, don't worry," he says. "She's not just family to you because I married her niece. Everybody knows that."

Mako feels a touch of warmth at the statement. People usually tread lightly around Lin, especially when it comes to feelings or family, but Bolin by nature can't fathom bottling anything up, keeping anything he feels below the surface. He has put words to the little adoptive family Mako and Lin have themselves in Republic City more than either of them ever have. It's awkward, especially when Lin is there to hear Bolin's remarks, but beneath the discomfort Mako is glad for that validation.

There's a pounding on Mako's office doors.

"I have to go," he tells Bolin. "Good to hear your voice, though."

"Yeah!" Bolin agrees. "I'll keep you updated on Mom. Good luck with Aunt Lin."

Mako puts the phone down and calls, "Come in."

"We've got the Avatar's kid in a holding cell," Sinrick informs him.

"Can it _really_ not be dealt with by someone else?"

"'Fraid I've got too much paperwork to do right now, Chief," Sinrick says, his usage of Mako's correct title undermined by the wink he throws in as he turns to leave. Mako sighs heavily and pushes himself up out of his chair, hands crinkling against just a couple of the many pages he still has not dealt with.

He's expecting it to be Yasuko, Korra and Asami's second youngest, in the cell. Twenty-two and a non-bender, Yasuko is working her way through the police academy with flying colours. She's highly trained in every style of fighting that her parents and all the city's finest instructors could teach her, and she's as good at using tech as Asami, though not as interested in designing or engineering it. She's a fierce kid and her heart's absolutely in the right place, but she's as impatient as Korra on a bad day _all the damn time,_ and not having graduated from the academy hasn't stopped her from trying to bust triads on the streets.

But as he pushes open the cell door, Mako is confronted with not Yasuko but the tearful face of seventeen-year-old Rozun; shy, bookish, and a firebender.

He reads the sheet Sinrick had passed him.

"Destruction of property?" he asks, raising an eyebrow at the kid, who sniffs wetly. "That doesn't seem like you, Rozun. What happened?"

"I was—" he pauses for a loud sniffle, "in the park. Trying to... um."

Mako prompts him with a look.

"To bend lightning," Rozun rushes out, staring down at the metal tabletop in front of him. "It could have gone more smoothly."

"You set fire to the bridge in Sato Memorial Park."

"It was an accident." Sniffle. "Also, does it really count if it's my family's park?"

"It was named after your family, but it's council property."

"Oh." There's a trail of clear liquid running from Rozun's nose to his top lip. He looks like he can't process what's been happening at all. There's a burnt smell about him, too, that has Mako worrying.

"Did you hurt yourself?" he asks. "The lightning. Did it all leave your body properly?"

Rozun nods. "I think so. In the wrong direction, obviously, but I didn't feel a shock or anything. I was buzzing like crazy, and hot like I was firebending, but nothing really hurt."

"You were lucky. Why didn't you just ask someone to teach you how to bend lightning?"

"Mom's always too busy, and Zuli's away since she and Shao joined the United Forces," Rozun shrugs. "Who was I meant to ask?"

Mako sighs. "Okay, starting now two things are going to happen," he tells the kid. "The first is that you're going to spend time helping to rebuild the memorial bridge and fix up the park. The second is that you're going to train with me once a week, and learn to bend lightning _safely_. Got it?"

Rozun's tear-streaked face positively lights up, and Mako knows he's made a good decision here. The boy is really the gentlest soul he's ever known. Even if he gets a bit hot-headed when he's frustrated, he's never mean, never deliberately violent. Rozun is clever, but not the genius Asami is, and he's a good bender, but not exceptional like Korra and his two oldest siblings, the soldiers. He's not very outgoing, and he doesn't do too well in the public eye. He is wise beyond his years if you take the time to really speak with him, a peacemaker before all else, and a great enthusiast for all things relating to history and the spirit world—but it's hard to convince a media hungry for drama that these things are worthy talents.

"Thanks, Uncle Mako!" Rozun looks like he wants to launch himself forward and hug Mako, but he's still cuffed in place.

It's at this moment that Korra bursts into the room.

"He did nothing wrong!" she says, rounding on Mako immediately. "Why have you dragged my son down here? You _know_ Rozun, he'd never hurt a bumble fly! He doesn't deserve this kind of treatment. And it's sending a bad message—"

"Mom, we've already—" Rozun tries to interrupt, but his soft voice is lost under Korra's anger.

"Cut the garbage, Korra," Mako is disappointed, though not surprised, to find himself shouting at Korra so soon. Clearly, it's one of those days.

 For some reason, his words stop Korra in her tracks.

"What?" he asks, and laughter explodes out of her. Korra laughs until she's doubled over, clutching the edge of the table to support herself.

"It's just—" she says, catching her breath, wiping away a tear. "You make a good Chief, Mako."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr](http://henrymercury.tumblr.com/) as henrymercury so feel free to hit me up over there.


End file.
